


I will remember the first time you kissed me

by corvidlesbian



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: But I love them anyway!, Death Threats, Enemies AND Lovers?, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, First Kiss, Guns, Gunshot Wounds, Harrow the Ninth Spoilers, Love/Hate, TM made Wake's name too long to fit in an ao3 tag and this is a TRAVESTY, this is not a healthy relationship dynamic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25720972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corvidlesbian/pseuds/corvidlesbian
Summary: “Destroy me as I am, but I want to kiss you before I am killed.”An unexpected request from a person currently riddled with bullets.
Relationships: Awake Remembrance Of These Valiant Dead etc. | Commander Wake/Pyrrha Dve
Comments: 13
Kudos: 53





	I will remember the first time you kissed me

“I am sorry,” said Wake’s enemy, one of John’s zombies, seemingly unperturbed by the bullets in their gut and the gun shoved up against their jaw.

“You have no right to apologise to me, you miserable piece of filth,” snarled Wake. She pushed the gun harder into the other person’s skin, trying to inflict whatever pain she could. With her other hand, she clutched their wrist so hard she was surprised it didn’t snap. Their spear and their sword had long since dropped to the ground, the sword out of reach and the spear in a different corridor of the ship; her enemy was completely at her mercy. They still met her glare with their unyielding brown eyes- beautiful, deep brown eyes- and did not falter.

“I am sorry,” they repeated. They spoke without much affect, but there was a certain resignation to their voice, and despite the poker face of the fucking myriad Wake still thought she could see respect in those eyes. “Destroy me as I am, but I want to kiss you before I am killed.”

An unexpected request from a person currently riddled with bullets. Thrown off-balance but unwilling to reveal such a gross vulnerability, Wake removed neither the threat of her gun nor her hand from their wrist. She simply said, “Why?”

“Because,” they said, and then paused, as if meaning to end it there. A moment later, they continued on in that strange, calm voice: “I have only once met someone so utterly willing to burn for what they believed in, and I loved him on sight, and the first time I died I asked of him what I now ask of you.”

Wake looked into the face of the person who had pursued her across the universe, and the edges of her vision went black from her fury. “I am the vengeance of the ten billion dead to that son of a bitch you call God, and I would put him down like a wounded animal, and I would kill you in much the same way because I know what you are- monster- lich- wizarding piece of shit- yet you stand there and you ask this of me? You ask this of me?” Wake was aware that flecks of spittle were decorating her lips, and also that the unholy being before her did not seem to care.

“I no longer fear death,” her enemy said. “I may die today. You may be my doom. This is not speculation, Commander, this is permission. I only want to kiss you before you send my soul wherever it will go.”

“Hell,” said Wake, cruelly, because she could never hold herself back from speaking truth. And yet she leaned in anyway, dropping the barrel of the gun from the other person’s jaw to instead point squarely at their heart. Wake kissed them with fury, in the same way that she did everything. She was not kind. She bit the fucker’s lip, dug her nails into their wrist, shoved her tongue in their mouth before they could do the same to her.

They did not respond in kind. Their free hand raised to cradle Wake’s face, as if with some kind of tenderness, which was just completely fucking inappropriate but the sheer nerve of it thrilled her. It didn’t really matter what they did: a step out of line, and she’d pump as many bullets into their chest as she cares to waste. So they could have this, for a moment.

When Wake pulled back, she did not kill them immediately. It might have been better if she had- almost certainly would have been, in fact- but she could not bring herself to. “Tell me who you are,” she demanded instead, because she had some inkling that this was not an ordinary Lyctor.

“You can call me Pyrrha,” the person said, “and I am not a lich, nor a wizard, although your other charges were fair and true. I am simply a woman with a talent for the spear.”

That was putting it mildly. Wake had only managed to get the upper hand through the advantage of surprise. Her enemy- Pyrrha- had not known of her Herald bullets until the first had pierced her abdomen. Wake did not boast when she claimed herself to be the best mortal fighter she had ever met, but Pyrrha was otherworldly, and she wielded that spear like she had a myriad’s experience with it. Given that she was one of John Gaius’s Lyctors, it was a near certainty that she did. Wake couldn’t help but admire her for her skill, but that didn’t mean that she had forgotten what an abomination she was.

“You have helped him destroy what is left of the human race,” Wake snarled, mouth inches from the other woman’s mouth. “You are complicit in his crimes, and you will burn as he will when the reckoning comes.”

Pyrrha didn’t flinch. She had this odd lack of affect to her, as if she simply didn’t know how to react to anything. As if she’d forgotten that she should. “I accept my fate,” she said. She stroked calloused fingers over Wake’s face, and Wake shuddered, perhaps in revulsion, perhaps something more terrifying. She had never before allowed herself to be victim to other people’s tenderness.

Wake put her finger on the trigger of the gun. She didn’t press down: she kept it there, considering. Pyrrha closed her eyes, those deep, soft brown eyes, and lifted her chin. She was ready to die with dignity, which was the one thing Wake did not want to give her.

“You should have started screaming the instant I shot you,” said Wake, still obscenely close to the other woman. “Every other Lyctor dropped and pissed themself, and here you are, breaking the rules.”

Pyrrha did not open her eyes when she said, “Commander Wake, I am anything but a normal Lyctor. If you have not noticed this by now, I overestimated you.”

Wake felt rage buzzing up her spine and filling her chest, hot and liquid, surging up through the back of her head and making her nerves spark and fire. She was allowing this woman to get under her skin. She was reacting as a lesser person might, which made her hate the bitch as she’d never hated anyone, but she knew when she closed the inches between their mouths that it wasn’t just hatred fuelling her.

Pyrrha was a good kisser. Wake didn’t have a lot to go on, but Pyrrha was adaptable and responsive and seemed to like it when Wake used her teeth and forced her to submit. Wake’s anger burned her up from the inside as it usually did, but somehow Pyrrha seemed to take some of the fire into herself. Wake was coming undone under the hands of a Lyctor. If her subordinates had seen her then, she would have killed them for seeing her vulnerable, if they hadn’t killed her for betraying them first.

But this wasn’t a betrayal, was it? Wake had not yet decided whether this monster would die, and while that choice was stuck in purgatory, it was no sin. The monster kissed back with firmness and tenderness both, as she shouldn’t have been allowed to, and it was a dizzying realization that Wake was starting to revel in it.

They fell apart once again, and Pyrrha stared at her unblinking. From this distance, Wake could see that her brown eyes were tinted so warmly that in places they looked closer to red. “Are you going to kill me now?” Pyrrha asked.

“Haven’t decided,” said Wake. She found herself wishing that Pyrrha’s hair was more than just stubble on her head, so she could grip it savagely and use it to take control of this revolting situation. She found herself feeling disjointed and uneasy. Could she be brought to her knees by someone as powerful, yet as helpless, as the person before her?

“I am not asking to be spared.”

“If you were, I would refuse.” The truth. If Pyrrha had struggled, or fought against her fate; if she had attempted to wrench the gun out of Wake’s hand or to remove her wrist from Wake’s vice grip, she would be dead. Wake stayed in furious silence for a long moment before she asked, through gritted teeth: “Do you know my name?”

“Wake,” said Pyrrha.

“My full name.”

“Awake Remembrance Of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity,” said Pyrrha, and she spoke it as if it was a fucking prayer, as if she was speaking to a higher power, as if she was evoking the man she called God. As if Wake wasn’t every Lyctor’s living nightmare. She had Herald bullets, Herald armour, Herald knives- yet here was this one, seemingly unafraid. Recklessly unafraid. It was fucking sickening. This shitwhistle thought she could march up, challenge her, kiss her, and say damn the consequences-

Pyrrha’s rough hand shifted to cradle Wake’s jaw, and she was staring at Wake’s lips with those dark and sombre eyes. Wake kissed her again, because she could, and because she wanted to, and Pyrrha’s thumb stroked ever-so-gently against Wake’s cheekbone. Wake dropped her vice grip on Pyrrha’s wrist to grasp the fabric of her shirt instead. Her hand thus freed, Pyrrha lifted it to cup the other side of her face. Her hands were warm. Her lips were soft. Wake broke the kiss.

With the hand gripping Pyrrha’s shirt, Wake shoved her back with the force of an industrial crush press. Pyrrha stumbled back, tripped, and went sprawling onto the floor. For a moment she lay there, looking dazed and stupid, and then she seemed to realize that she was within range of her fallen rapier. As Pyrrha groped around for the hilt, Wake’s nerves lit up like a live wire. She raised her gun to aim at the fallen woman’s forehead.

Pyrrha pulled the rapier up and laid the handle over her stomach, over the bullet wounds Wake had gifted her with. Wake stayed rigid, tense and coiled and ready to spring. Her fears were unfounded; Pyrrha didn’t so much as twitch. They regarded each other, Pyrrha’s gaze unreadable.

“Run,” said Wake finally, resisting the urge to reach up and touch where she could still feel the phantom press of the other woman’s lips on hers. “Run, and the next time I see you, you’re dead.”

After Pyrrha rose to her feet and limped away, further into the depths of the ship to the docking bay where she would no doubt flee in her shuttle, Wake allowed herself to acknowledge the grotesque reality that there now existed a Lyctor she did not want to kill.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting on the arc for almost three months please _scream with me_


End file.
